It is hard to beat a Shrew for a short, light, handy, good shooting and good looking bow. With a 56" Shrew Classic Hunter or Lil' Favorite, people here with 32"+ draw lengths can comfortably shoot them. The biggest problem with a Shrew is finding one for sale or waiting a year and a half to get one made, but that happens when a product is so good and demand is high. Bob Morrison has some excellent bows that can be short if you start with a short riser and don't have a long draw length. Bob has been one of the most innovative bowyers of our time and brought foam cores and carbon fiber to the forefront in traditional hunting bows. Some folks here have good things to say about various other short bows, but I don't have experience with most of them. Big Jim's Thunderchild and Lee Hoots' bows look nice and have received praise by many who own them. Someday I would like to shoot them and compare them to my Shrews, but I am extremely happy with the latest materials available in the Shrews (with some friendly guidance from Bob Morrison) that really make exceptional bows when constructed by a skilled bowyer like Gregg Coffey. At this point, the "advanced" materials are not available from Big Jim and Lee Hoots, although pretty much every bowyer offers bamboo as a limb core material, which has been one of the standards for many years and performs very well. I like takedowns for traveling, and the Shrew and Hoots bows can be made with BowBolts, while Big Jim uses the Locket Socket system. Both connections work very well. The Locket Socket is reputed to be stronger, but that only matters on heavy poundage bows. I have a BowBolt on a 68# bow (and on several lighter bows) that works very well and is plenty strong enough. Big Jim has used his Locket Socket on bows in excess of 80# without problems, but most of us can't draw a bow that heavy anyway. In addition to the two piece bows, Morrison and others make three piece bows that are very strong and travel well. I know there are other nice, short bows out there like the St. Joe, the RER, the Black Swan, etc., and it is nice to hear the owners speak up about them. A good, short bow is hard to beat in many of today's hunting situations where we shoot from tight spots in tree stands, pop-up blinds, and other ground blinds. Just compare a 56" bow with a more conventional 64" bow, and the advantages can be enormous in the right circumstances. I personally shoot my short Shrews and Morrisons about as well as my longer bows. I also own or have owned a couple of short bows that I am not very impressed with; however, I am not going to mention what they are because some TradGangers speak very highly of them. Just because they don't work for me doesn't mean they won't for others.
Allan
Topic: looking for a short bow recommendation (Read 1054 times)
